Writing ~ left-right-brain-thinking

Writing is an activity that requires both sides of your brain.

The left brain is the organizer – categories, associations, language, words. While the right brain is the creativity center.

Are you sitting at a desk, staring at paper or your computer screen, wondering why your brain can’t come up with anything to write? Or having written something and upon reading it over, it seems flat?

Try taking a look at how to get the left and right sides of your brain working together.

One way is to do something else unrelated to get some ideas flowing as we discussed in our article with tips for capturing your best ideas.

Fun ways, we came up with to shake up our brains, include:

• sitting backwards, facing away from your desk and writing on a notepad
• writing with the opposite hand (this one was really tricky-:)
• using all different coloured pens
• writing on a poster-sized piece of paper
• writing from the bottom of the page to the top

Some worked better than others to distract our left brain so our right brain could interject some creative notes!

Another way we’ve found helpful is to move – stand up, walk, jump up and down, maybe even hula hooping or skipping might help.

We also like Brain Gym. Stylecraze listed what they think are the Top 15 Simple Brain Gym Exercises. According to Wikipedia “One of the underlying ideas is that the exercises are intended to balance the brain hemispheres so the two sides work together better”

Some interesting thoughts on right-left brain thinking can also be found in the articles below:

• From Vermont College of Fine Arts that talks about “writing from both sides of the brain“
• An article at Oprah.com explains “how to tap into right-brain thinking.”

How do you get the creative side connected to the organizing side of your brain to help with your writing?